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Bruckner wrote three Masses
and a Te Deum, but never a Requiem. Yet this highly religious
composer, who dedicated more than one composition to God, certainly had the
sensibility to create a Requiem if he
had wanted to – as is shown in the second movement of his Symphony No. 7,
written in the knowledge that his idol, Wagner, had not long to live. The symphony’s
first performance, a huge triumph for Bruckner, came in 1884, the year after
Wagner’s death, but whether there was anything bittersweet for the composer on
the occasion is unknown. The Seventh remains one of Bruckner’s most popular
symphonies and one of his most effective, and Stanisław Skrowaczewski gives it a highly impassioned, yet stately,
performance in a live recording from October 2012 – just weeks after this
distinguished conductor’s 89th birthday. As with most Bruckner
symphonies, there are differing and sometimes competing versions of the Seventh
available, the original 1883 one (played at the première) unfortunately being lost.The 1944 Haas edition and 1954 one from Nowak are the two most often
performed, but Skrowaczewski has made his own, and uses it in this performance.
Details of the differences will not be apparent to most listeners, although
Skrowaczewski does retain the cymbal clash and other percussion at the climax
of the Adagio (as does Nowak but not
Haas). What will be clear to
listeners is that Skrowaczewski has a determinedly old-fashioned and, in its
way, highly effective approach to the symphony, seeing it as a glorious edifice
whose grandeur is its primary feature and whose Wagner-requiem second movement
is its heart if not its climax. Stately, well-paced (on the slow side but
without dragging), and played with warmth and sonic beauty by the London
Philharmonic Orchestra, this Bruckner Seventh is testimony both to
Skrowaczewski’s thoughtfulness in handling the works of this composer and to
the composer/conductor’s own understanding of how to pace and build a grand
work that sustains emotionally from start to finish.

Marin Alsop could use some
lessons from Skrowaczewski. Brahms’ Ein Deutsches
Requiem predates Bruckner’s Seventh by some 15 years and is its equal in
scope and scale. But Alsop seems somewhat impatient with it, offering a
performance that runs less than 65 minutes and often seems superficial if not
overtly rushed. Alsop often evinces a certain discomfort with
standard-repertoire works, especially those of the Romantic era, tending to
perform them dutifully but without any special insight. She extracts very fine
playing from her forces here – soloists, chorus and orchestra all are responsive,
involved and clearly committed to the music – but the emotional core of this
(+++) reading is not what it should be. Brahms’ work is quite different from
traditional Catholic Requiems, using texts from Luther’s translation of the
Bible and focusing more on the living who must go on after the death of a loved
one than on the dead and the hope of their eventual resurrection. Some
performances of Brahms’ work make it almost turgid, and its tempos can be
painfully slow in some conductors’ readings; certainly Alsop cannot be accused
of those excesses. But she tends to go too far in the opposite direction, never
into actual lightness – the work scarcely permits that – but into a kind of
blasé near-indifference that prevents the heartfelt sentiments of Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras and Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit from coming
through as effectively as they can. Certainly this performance is well played
and well sung, but it is not emotionally evocative or convincing in the way
that Ein Deutsches Requiem can be,
and does not leave listeners feeling either especially sad or particularly
uplifted. The beauties of the music come through, but its depths do not.

One of the great settings of
the traditional Catholic Requiem is
Mozart’s, and it does get a highly effective
reading in a live recording from the Lucerne Festival in August 2012. Mozart’s
incomplete Requiem is a surprisingly hopeful
work, and it is its essence of forgiveness and consolation on which Claudio
Abbado focuses to fine effect in this (++++) performance. Much of the credit
for the quality here goes to the quartet of soloists: Anna Prohaska, Sara
Mingardo, Maximilian Schmitt and René
Pape are all first-class singers, and Abbado melds them skillfully in sections
whose tonal beauty is matched by the expressiveness of the music throughout.
Abbado does not use the most commonly heard version of this work, the one
finished by Franz Xaver Süssmayr:
the Sanctus here was completed by
Robert Levin. The non-Mozart potions of the music are, in any case, true to the
form and orchestration of what Mozart himself wrote. What is most impressive
here is that Abbado clearly shapes the work as a totality, despite its
incompleteness, and by focusing on consoling rather than mourning, he produces
a reading that makes the promise of redemption the central element of the
music, while not ignoring the sadness that lies at the heart of every Requiem,
by Mozart or anyone else. The biggest failing of the recording is not in the
performance but in the pricing: the 60-minute Requiem is the only work here, and $40 for a Blu-ray Disc of this
single work – which is available in many other, equally fine renditions – seems
excessive. Listeners who want to see as well as hear this specific performance
and who strongly favor the Blu-ray format will, however, find Abbado’s reading
a top-notch one visually and sonically as well as musically.